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I finally have my own personal website, which I’m being told is a must for creative professionals in today’s competitive online marketplace. Here it is: www.dukepope.com

To be honest I’m still trying to figure out how to get ahead in this rat race of self promotion and social media mumbo jumbo. I sometimes wish we could go back to the time of knocking doors and calling up solid desktop telephones with gut shaking mechanical ringing and get through to a real person on the other side. In reality I guess there’s nothing stopping us from knocking doors and ringing up people, and despite the mantra of “online presence is everything” perhaps this is still the way that would actually get you somewhere as an aspiring creative professional. I guess it’s time to put it to the test! (And perhaps I’ll even let you know how it goes). In the meantime please have a look at my webpage and let me know what you think of it! (And as a side note, if you click the “music” link, it will take you to my soundcloud and my latest song, which I finished last week, called Believe in Love.)

It is so refreshing and inspiring to come across an artist with such a playful and creative catalogue as S. M. Samsu. Not bound to the western conventions of perspective or the intellectual blind alley of westen post war art, Samsu’s work sparkles with artistic freedom and the joy of painting. Of course Samsu is established within the genre of Bangladeshi rickshaw art, but he lifts the genre to new heights with his colourful symphony of animals, birds and people. Especially his paintings where animals take the place of people, as in his “Rickshaw workshop” and “school”, are just so playful and surreal they instantly make the viewer smile.

The images are taken from rickshaw-paint.net, where artwork by S. M. Samsu and other Bangladeshi rickshaw painters can be bought.

I have always been a collector of little things. My first collection was a shoe box full of pine cones. Later I found it more exiting to collect objects that didn’t all look the same, like stamps for instance. My grandfather was a diligent and proud philatelist and used to give me stamps for Christmas. As I child I spent hours organizing and admiring these little artpieces, which is a labour I appreciate now, many years later. As well as being amazing graphic design pieces, these stamps are also icons of a bygone era. A digital print of an Adobe Illustrator file will never be quite the same as a miniature engraving, as many of the old stamps are. Here are some of the favourite pieces from my collection; the rest of the set can be found here: Thirty Stamps

After briefly straying into the domain of protests and revolution, it’s time to get back on track with some funky R&B from the height of the carnivalistic madness of the 1980s. Behind this great track are the Bar Kays, a resilient band with a stormy history. They started out in 1966 as a backing band for Stax Records, and were chosen to support Otis Redding in 1967. Tragically, four of the founding members died in the same plane crash that also ended Otis Redding’s career much too early. The two surviving members of the Bar Kays however managed to re-establish the band – an admirable accomplishment. They went on to become a successful funk band in the seventies, and kept up the success with a more commercial sound as they entered the eighties.

“Her yer Taksim – her yer direniş” has been one of the main slogans chanted by Turkish protesters over the past weeks, literally meaning “everywhere is Taksim – everywhere is resistance.” It underlines how what’s happening in Turkey is not an isolated event, but part of a global movement, towards true democracy – without an invisible hand pulling the strings of political leaders and forcefully shaping history to benefit the very few who own the resources, control the banking sector and profit from never ending wars. Just as the police violence has been apalling, the courage and creativity of the protesters has been highly inspiring. Below are a selection of fascinating of pictures from the Turkish uprising.

It all started as a peaceful sit in, with poetry recited to the police

But the Turkish police responded with immense violence and brutality

But protesters would not let the police terrorize them into obedience any more. By now they were determined to resist at any cost.

The exessive use of force was unusual, even in Turkish standards.

The protests spread to most major cities in Turkey. This picture is from Eskisehir.

Chemical Dervish

People from all segments of Turkish society are taking part. Gypsy girl selling vendetta masks.

Accordeon vendetta

Messages of solidarity coming from far and near, here from Arı Köyu, a small village in the north of Turkey.

Celeste Boursier-Mougenot is a French artist, trained as a musician and composer. His art installations revolve around peculiarly created soundscapes, where humans and animals interact with their surroundings to create the finest avant garde music (making eccentric composers and sheet music redundant, not to mention orchestras). In this installation from the Barbican Centre in London in 2010, a flock of zebra finches take the main stage, creating music by landing on, hopping around on and thrusting twigs between the strings of electric guitars. They seem to be having quite a good time!

The fascinating still life portraits of Guiseppe Arcimboldo were largely forgotten in the centuries following his death – until his rediscovery in the 20th century by modernist and surrealist painters such as Picasso and Salvador Dali. How could it happen that such a brilliant and original artist almost vanished from the annals of art history? The Renaissance was marked by a fascination with riddles, puzzles, and the bizarre, which is also evident in the art of his Arcimboldo’s contemporaries, such as Hieronymus Bosch and Peter Bruegel. As the Renaissance faded into Baroque and Rococo this fascination was gradually replaced by esthetic indulgence and dramatic displays, plump women and lavish interiors. In the meantime Prague, where Archimboldo had spent most of his life as a painter for the Habsburg court, was sacked by the Swedish army in 1648, and his work spread across Europe. Arcimboldo’s assembled portraits are playful, but also scientific in their representation of nature. He was certainly an eccentric, but his absurd, yet analytical portraits still capture us almost five hundred years later. For those wanting to read more about Arcimboldo, there is a great article about him at rhetoricaldeivice.com